AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
Master foundational cloud computing concepts, core Azure architectural components, compute and networking services, storage options, security, governance, and cloud cost management.
Official Exam Specification & Quick Facts
Question Difficulty Breakdown
Recommended Study Guides & Exam Preparation Blueprints
Reinforce your knowledge with domain breakdowns, trap question analyses, and architectural cheat sheets:
Exam Guidelines & Simulation Rules
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
The AZ-900 exam consists of 40-60 multiple-choice, drag-and-drop, and hot-area questions with a 45-60 minute duration. The exam registration fee is $99 USD, and the required passing score is 700 out of 1000 (70%).
The exam evaluates three functional domains: (1) Describe cloud concepts (~25-30%), (2) Describe Azure architecture and services (~35-40%), and (3) Describe Azure management and governance (~30-35%).
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides virtualized hardware (VMs, VNet) where you manage the OS and apps. Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides an application environment (Azure App Service, Azure SQL) where Azure manages the OS and runtime. Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers complete hosted applications (Microsoft 365) fully managed by the provider.
Security responsibility is shared between Microsoft and the customer. Microsoft always manages physical datacenters, physical networks, and physical host hardware. The customer is always responsible for information/data, devices/endpoints, and identity/access management.
Availability Zones are physically separate datacenter locations within the same Azure region, each equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploying across Availability Zones protects applications against single-datacenter outages with a 99.99% VM uptime SLA.
Capital Expenditure (CapEx) involves substantial upfront spending on physical servers and real estate with depreciating value. Operational Expenditure (OpEx) eliminates upfront infrastructure costs, allowing organizations to pay only for consumed compute, storage, and networking on an elastic consumption model.
ARM is the deployment and management service for Azure. A Resource Group is a logical container that holds related resources for an Azure solution, enabling collective lifecycle management, tagging, role-based access control (RBAC), and billing aggregation.
Azure Policy evaluates resources in Azure by comparing their properties against business rules defined in JSON format. It can audit non-compliant configurations, deny unapproved resource deployments (e.g., blocking non-allowed VM SKUs or regions), or automatically remediate tags.
Azure Cost Management provides continuous visibility into cloud spending trends, budget thresholds, and cost optimization recommendations. It enables administrators to define spending alerts that trigger notifications via email or webhooks when consumption approaches budget limits.
Azure Blob Storage offers four access tiers: Hot (frequently accessed data), Cool (infrequently accessed, stored >= 30 days), Cold (rarely accessed, stored >= 90 days), and Archive (long-term offline retention with retrieval latency up to several hours, stored >= 180 days).
Unlike associate and expert role-based certifications, Microsoft Fundamentals certifications like AZ-900 do not expire and do not require annual renewal.
AZ-900 is intended for business leaders, technical sales professionals, developers, systems engineers, and students seeking foundational knowledge of cloud services and Microsoft Azure before pursuing role-based paths like AZ-104 or AZ-204.